 Words at War presents Lifeline, a story of the United States Merchant Marine. Yeah, I'll pull up a chair, folks. I'll try to tell you a few of the facts of the story. That's necessary, you know, and it kind of, there's not so many of you people who sure know them. So, uh, first I'd like to explain a couple of things about where the Lifeline stretches. What's carried over it, what the ships are like, how they sail and convoy. Forget it, Al. They won't listen. What do you mean they won't listen? They ain't interested. It's been tried before. They don't give a damn. Oh, no. Well, get this straight, pal. This time they will listen. This time they're going to hear the truth whether they like it or not. Me, I'm going to tell them. I'm going to tell them what happens to crews on the Merman's Grunt, what happens on the way to Malta and Liverpool and Bandar-Chapur. I'm going to tell them, and they don't dare shut me up. No, maybe they won't like to hear this story because parts of it aren't very pretty. They aren't pretty at all. But I'm going to tell it, mates. I'm going to tell it anyway. Words at War. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council of Books and Wartime presents another in its series of adaptations of the outstanding books of this war. Tonight, Lifeline by Robert Koss, as interpreted for radio by Charles Newton. My name is Al Cook, and I'm an able seaman U.S. maritime service. So let's get on with this story about my shipmates. Now, I don't want to use no high-sounding words about there being brave and stalwart soldiers of the sea. But I'd like to put it to you straight on what they do and what they get for it. I think I'll start off by making you acquainted with an old friend of mine. You know him, and you know most of us. He was a little squirt, Louie, with a mug like a head of cauliflower you've been keeping in your coal bin. Seaman for 20 years. When jobs were slack, it starved and froze and was forgotten on the beach. But starting a couple of years before Pearl Harbor, there began to be plenty of jobs. That is, if you didn't mind getting bombed and shelled and torpedoed. So Louie signed on board an ammunition ship bound for Liverpool. And that was the start of things. Well, time passes, and after three years on Submarine Alley, Louie is quite a changed man. You can see for yourself, that's him now, walking from the Embarcadero towards the dock gate. It's a dark night, there's a little fog in the bay, and Louie stumbles every once in a while. But not because it's dark, and he's had a drop to drink. Take it easy, Louie. You gotta pass these guards at the gate. Hey, take it easy, pal. Let's see your pass. Okay. Hey, don't try and climb none of them fog banks up there. Who's the gas hound, Mac? Him? That's screwy Louie. Oh, strictly a character. Sure, screwy Louie. Strictly a character. You got a funny moniker, you make guys laugh. But to yourself, you're not so funny. You're scared and plenty. You've been dumped twice out there, and tonight you're going out again. Maybe this time you won't come back to give a laughter guy's on a duck. And before you got dumped, you were just Louie, and your hands didn't twitch and get wet inside. The screwy part of the name got tacked on afterwards, and you had to either laugh or go nuts. Keep on laughing, Louie. Who's that? Who's coming aboard? Me, Boussin. There's sober, screwy. Sub-enough. Then you take her out. We'll let these kids aboard mule haul the line. Start moving, Louie. Up top side to the wheelhouse. They trust you. They know you're a good worker. Even if your finger joints are stiff and awkward, then you can't splice wire the way you used to. Take it easy, Louie. Don't start remembering how they got that way. All right, mate. Go ahead. Think about it. Six hours out of Liverpool in the Irish Sea. Bango. There she goes. You were lucky, Louie. Those women and kids bound for Canada didn't have a chance. Ten hours on the raft, and you were about through. With the ice on you like a suit of armor, and your hands cracked wide and bleeding in the blood freezing as it flowed. You saw guys too weak to climb from the water to the raft, hang there for hours, and you pulled and pulled at them, but you were weak too, and after a while they slipped down and away. Oh. Easy, Louie. Keep a hold on yourself. I don't want the old man to hear you. He'll chuck you up the gangplank jitters and throw you on a beach. Steady now. Here he is. All right, Louie. Take the wheel. Yes, sir. Slowest turn, mate. And so you're off again, Louie, standing out to sea. Then the old man leaves, and you're alone. What did you do it? Nobody made you sign on again. The doctor said he'd square you with a draft board if you wanted to take that job in the shipyard, sure. Yeah, yeah, I know. You're a sailor. Seafaring's your trade. Pull yourself together, man. Don't let this thinking stuff get you. Some night you'll walk bloody well over the side. Count all the pretty girls you know. Keep your mind busy with that. Oh, Louie, don't count them. Don't go remembering that afternoon in the Bay of Bengal and count the shipmates you lost. Don't do it, Louie. Don't. All right, mate. Live it through again. There was no chance for the cargo ships that day. They were too slow. None of our guns could touch those two Jap cruisers. The Jap stood off and poured it in, salvo after salvo. You could see their guns firing broadside. Cricks of orange flame in the sunshine. In the shells, bigger, whirling, whining, screaming, striking. You got to a boat and lowered it away as the ship began to go. The Jap shells kept coming over. The sharks were getting their share of the men, too. The ones there was just no room for in your boat. One, two. And you tried to get the men to row with a regular stroke and give way together. They looked at you with eyes that had no sense left when the authorities of harm and rage. The second assistant was cursing. It was the same thing over and over again. Help! Help! Louie, you got to hold yourself. You got to hold yourself. You got the horrors bad, eh, man? Real bad. I got to tell you, George. You're my watch partner. You're my friend. You'll understand. Yeah, I know how you feel. We're off watching in a couple of minutes, Louie. We'll get down and have a shot of coffee and play a little rummy. I can't sleep right now and no more than you can. Makes you feel better, Louie, to have George around. He's your watch partner, your friend. And after a little, you get relieved and the both of you go below to the mess room. Mates, I just cooked up a batch of fresh biscuits. What do you say about some of that, huh? Okay, you're wonderful. Give and plenty. And while George goes to the galley, you start dealing out the cards, Louie. Suddenly everything seems warm and safe, friendly, fine. And your eyes begin to close. Here you are, Louie. Save your biscuits for the other guy's cookie. How about Louie? He's asleep in there. Oh, that Louie. He sure is a good man. Yeah. Yeah, you betcha. All right, folks. In a few minutes, I'll tell you how screwy Louie ended that particular voyage. Of course, it's tempting to go on with the story, but there's a few things I got to say about all merchant seamen instead of just one. All in all, there's about 100,000 of us. Now, that's not so many when you think of all the millions in the Army and Navy. But those millions would never get the chance to fight where they're hooting a gale without us few in the lifeline. It takes at least 10 tons of equipment to send each soldier overseas and another ton and a half a month to keep them there. So you can reckon we got a lot to carry these days. And if we weren't getting this stuff across OK, there wouldn't be any invading Pacific Islands or Europe or any place at all. OK, then. So what do we like? This fistful of guys with a king-sized job? Well, it's hard to know how to begin. Ah, store your gab, Al. They think we're a bunch of bums and that's what they'll go on thinking. Yeah, a lot of us sound pretty tough and independent, but that's mostly because we're not very sure of ourselves after being pushed around when we come ashore, having the girls crossed to the other side of the street because we're not in uniform, getting the fishy eye if we show up at a service club. Well, they begin to feel sort of bitter about what you thought were your own people. Ah, can it, Al? When did you get to be such a character? Now, there's an idea. I could start off by telling you a little about the language we use. Now, you take that word character, for instance. A character is a guy which you can't quite make out. Like when he starts making a play for credit, see? It's a C language, all its own. Of course, some of it's the same as they use in the Navy. For instance, you call a guy what his job is. Like I'm the carpenter, so they call me Chips. Like I'm the radio operator, so I got sparks for a moniker. Call me Flex, because I'm a signalman. And me Cookie, because I'm Cook. Any other unknown man gets a special tag. He's a jabroni. You take me now. I'm a gazooni. And then these youngsters coming out of the training schools. Speak up, kiddo. What's the name? I'm a gonzel, sir. Now, if a man loses his sense of self-respect and common decency in any way at all, mooches on a shipmate's rights, that guy we call a performer. And if a lad what's going ashore takes a drop too much, why, we say, he's gashed up. Me, I'm a gazooni. And I'm all gashed up. Then, of course, we got our words for trouble. Like a tinfish, which is a torpedo. And when a tinfish smacks us, why, we get dumped. There's a lot of other words we use too. You're getting on the track again, Al. Are you making a dictionary? We never talk so well, Al. Tell them what we think. Yeah, maybe that's right. What we think. I wonder if I can ever make you sure people understand. We think about the sea. It's never out of our minds. The sea is our life. At times, many, many times, when we love the sea, it may be when the sun's on it and the blue waters of the South Pacific and the tremendous slow rollers go heaving under the keel. The breeze has a soft, soft, small sound and touches your skin light and gentle like a girl's fingers. Or it may be a dawn when out of the purple darkness the sun heaves up all gold and light and a dew has suddenly gone from the deck plates. And on each wave crest, there's a little flicker of flame. Tell them about the other times, Al. Yeah, the other times. The times when we hate the sea, like you can't hate nothing else that ever is, or was or will be. When we've been dumped and spent days and weeks and months in the lifeboats under a southern sun. When we've seen our own bodies parched and shriveled and shrink and grow boils and sores and we'd have to just lie there and watch the weaker winds go mad and babble at home of food of women and water and water. The sharks had bumped the both sides with a gentle, horrible thud and we hate the sea when we remember the northern winds the lack of snow then ice forming in our bodies. For hours at a time we've kicked and beaten each other to keep the circulation going. And off the North Cape on the Russian run we've seen men become blue chunks of ice after a few minutes in the water. When we try and haul them up over the shipsides while the Nazi planes kept coming in their hands and feet would be lopped off just like branches of a rotten tree. I remember it was a little after a second Murmansk run when my friend Willie read me the article. We'd come ashore in an east coast port where the only accommodation merchant semen could get was in some dark filthy little rooming house at eight bucks a day. We were sitting there, Willie and me one afternoon when... Hey, hey listen to this now here's a story in a paper about it. Yeah, what do you know? Well, it says, while millions of loyal self-sacrificed Americans are today serving for a pittance a pittance? Hey, what's that mean now? It means a little bit. Keep going, Willie. While millions of loyal self-sacrificed Americans are today serving for a pittance in the armed forces we are confronted with a shocking spectacle of a hundred thousand merchant semen making money hand over fist. Cut the comedy, Willie. Well, honest now, that's what it says. Now will you listen? Here's what comes next. Not only has the merchant marine become a place to get rich quick but it also provides a safe haven for thousands of draft dodgers. Men unwilling to face the enemy themselves ride the seas with comparative safety under the watchful guns of the navy. Nor is that all. There have been times during actual military landing operations when merchant crews refused to work cargo after regular hours because of union regulations. Cut that stuff, Willie. I don't want to hear any more of that bilge. Hey, I wonder where they get them ideas. I just don't get it. Why do they print such lies? Why did the guy write it? What good does writing lies about us poor gazoonies do him? Gee, I don't know how. I forget it, mate. Nothing we can do about it. Willie said there's nothing we could do about stories like that. Well, I think there is. I think we can bust them wide open. And that's what I'm aiming to do. Joe. I'm aboard, Al. Listen, people. Joe here is an ordinary seaman with a wife and two kids. Sam. I'm pulling with you, Al. Sam's a friend of the both of us. No shipmate, as a matter of fact. But he wanted to do some shooting himself instead of just getting shot at so he joined the navy. He's a seaman first class and a couple of kids ashore, too. Ordinary seaman merchant service and seaman first class U.S. Navy. Well, they're about the same amount. Now, Sam. What's your average yearly pay in the U.S. Navy? Including your family allotment. $1886.40. And yours in the merchant marine, Joe? $1975. That includes my wages, voyage bonuses, and overtime. Of course, I don't get no family allotment. All right. So, Joe, the merchant seaman averages $90 a year higher pay than Sam the seaman of the Navy first class. Now, Sam, what do you end up with after federal income and victory taxes? Same thing. I don't have to pay Uncle Sam no income or victory tax. What about you, Joe? Well, this year they nicked me for 75 clams and 30 cents. So, Sam the seaman first class, I still got my $1886.40. And Joe, the ordinary merchant seaman? I got $1897.75. In other words, over the period of a year, after federal income and victory taxes, the ordinary merchant seaman makes $11 and 30 cents more than the Navy seaman first class. Okay, he still comes out ahead, but he's got to pay for his own clothing and for medical attention and hospitalization for his wife and kids. Sam here gets those things paid by the Navy. That's right, isn't it, Sam? Sure thing, Al. You've got this uniform. That gives me a lot of other privileges you guys don't have. I don't get it, Al. You think everybody'd know all this? They don't, Sam. But now that you folks listening have heard it, remember, please, we're not getting rich in the merchant service. If we're lucky, we're just getting by. Now, there's another thing that newspaper fella talked about. He made some dirty cracks that being in the merchant service with the guts. Well, I've already told you something about screwy Louis and what happens to a guy when he gets torpedoed. I figure a guy's going to face the chance of that happening to him if he's lily livid. Haven for draft dodgers, says the writer fella. Listen here. So far in this war, the merchant marine service has lost a higher percentage of men than all the armed services together. Now, what kind of a haven do you think that looks like to a gentleman who's trying to keep a whole skin? No guts needed for the merchant service, huh? Never mind the generalities, Al. They don't mean much to people. Give them something they can get their teeth into, Al. Tell them about Charlie Richardson. Yeah, Charlie Richardson. They gave him the distinguished service medal on the kind of what he did one day. Three of his shipmates got decorated, too. They had to give the medal for one of them to the widow. Charlie Richardson was an able-bodied sailor on a tanker southbound off the Atlantic coast. In the first year of war. The attack came in pitch darkness when the U-boat surfaced and began firing at him out of the night. Fires broke out above and below decks, but the ship kept on trying to run, and the Navy gun crew was still firing back. Well, it wasn't Charlie Richardson's job, but he was back there serving with that gun crew. He got a shell fragment wound in the back, but that didn't stop him, either. Finally, the ship is flames all over, and the Nazi suddenly stops his fire. When the order comes to abandon ship, Charlie Richardson starts trying to help a couple of his wounded Navy pals. All right, come on. Come on, you guys. I'll help you to the rail. No use, Charlie. Too weak to swim. Never mind that. I can tell you. Feet and pal, you wounded yourself. Listen, sailors, I got no time to argue with you. That sub will put a tin fish into us any minute. All right, come on now. Up you go. That's a ticket. Easy now. So Charlie Richardson lugs both of them and says, you know, so Charlie Richardson lugs both of these guys to the ship side and pitches them into the sea. They float okay because they got life jackets. But neither of them got strength enough to swim away from the ship, so they won't get sucked down when she goes under. So Charlie jumps in after them to give these guys a hand. Have a hold of my neck now. Yeah. Hang on. Hang on. He pulls one man on his back, and he tells the other to hang on to his neck. Then he starts swimming, carrying the weight of them away from the ship. Just to help things, the sub lets go with a torpedo. Nearly blows them all out of the water. Charlie keeps right on swimming with his passenger. Keep with me, guys. Hang on. And then, attracted by the trail of blood, the sharks come in. Charlie Richardson gets out his sailor's knife and begins to fight. He keeps stabbing away at the long gray bodies. He can't even see. He feels their teeth tearing the flesh from his hands. Until finally, in spite of all he can do... No use, Charlie. Can't hold on any longer. Thanks for trying. Thanks. Yeah. The guy on his back slips off. Way down. Charlie still got one passenger, and he sets his teeth and swears he's not going to lose him. Maybe this will mean the end to him, but he keeps on trying, swimming and fighting until finally out of nowhere. Give my hand, man. Pull him into the boat. Ah, Mr. Newspaper Man. That's a true story. And if you want to check on it, just look up the presidential citation. You won't have no trouble finding it. Take a look-see before you write that next article, saying merchant seamen haven't got guts. Now, there's just one thing more, folks. It's about the story of the merchant seamen at Guadalcanal who refused to work cargo after regular hours on a kind of union regulations. Well, let me say that the fellas who tell that story have been proven liars by the United States Admiral in command of the Guadalcanal area and by the United States Marine Corps officer commanding Guadalcanal itself at that time. Well, now I'd like to tell a story of my own based on some true facts about merchant seamen at Guadalcanal. Yeah, about screwy Louie. I promised I'd tell you how he ended that voyage you met him on. And this is the way it happened. There it is. There it is. A green hunk of mountain resting in the blue sea. A week ago, the Marines made a landing and now the guys in these transports are going to help them strengthen their position. And the guys in these cargo ships have brought the supplies they need. From on deck now, you can hear a little distant gunfire. The Japs are over there, Louie. Yeah. I'm hoping we get a chance to go ashore. The mate put it to the postman. He needs three volunteers. Guys to go as quickly as possible. I'm hoping we get a chance to go ashore. There it is. Guys to go as coxons in the landing barges from the transports. Meaning you, me, and I'll. We're the only fellas aboard but to go as coxons in those barges. That Japs will have to shoot the devil out of us. We don't have to volunteer. Right. Me though, I'm going. No sense coming this far without going to the end of the line. How about you, Al? I'll go. There's three of us. There's a screwy body in name. Below us we see the barges we're supposed to handle. We go over the side together, bound into the barges, into the motor controls and wheels at the stern. Each of us got a barge of his own. We sweep around, clear the ship and taxi over to a transport. Louie's first load of Marines are all young. Some are serious and quiet. Some are talking only because they're so nervous. They crouch low beneath the steel sides of the barge. The screwy Louie gets his shovel off order from the transport's deck. He trembles. He trembles bad until... until his barge is caught and rushed forward by the leading roller traveling to shore. He's got no time for anything but business. There are three rollers he sees. The third has a high, spuming criss. He reckons it has full speed for it. The barge goes up and up again, steadily and in and out in a veering sweep in through calm water to the smooth sand beach. And the Marines are out across the bow gate. They're capped in the head of him. They go up the beach in the double. But over by the palm trees, what a jax is supposed to be, there's no movement, no sound. Next time maybe. Maybe next time we'll have trouble. Gotta go back and get another load. Louie makes fast a line, they float into him. And a big tender standing out of ways hauls him and his barge through the surf out again to sea. Louie's laughing now. He's on top of the world. This is fun. He's stolen his sleep and his peace. The next trip is the same. He's very confident as he starts the third one. He sends the flat-bowed barge forward with a roller rush. But above the sound of the water comes another sound. Now, abrupt. Machine guns, jet machine guns. Get down, Louie. Duck or they'll tear you apart. I can't duck. He hears the guns. By now he can even see the flicker of their muzzle flame among the jungle growth, beyond the shore bombs. Bullets lace the water with spurts and jets. They rack it along the barge side. Climb the steel, crack through the air around him. Louie knows about that. He knows that sound. It's the one that means pain and death. He's afraid of it. He's so afraid that bitter gorge rises in his throat. No second he's been bolst. When the bullet smack him, his chest, his right arm and his thigh, the pain is only a little worse than the pain of his fear. The bullet shot knocks him around. His hand drops from the motor speed control. And he pulls himself up, takes the wheel and motor control and attacks him. At the moment everything seems very, very clear to him. He's a screwy pal. But you're not screwy enough to let this bunch of guys drown. This bunch wins. The guys will come after you. You'll have a chance. They won't have to go through this. It's glancing up onto the sand. Things are getting blurry now. You seize the marines, jump and run. Guns raised in their hands. And then he sits. Slides down to the bottom of the barge. Clamps his fingers over the wound in his leg. Stopped the blood from flowing. Me and George, we find him there that way. We lift him to the sand in the lee of his own barge. Louie, Louie, how are you doing, man? And screwy Louie, he looks up at us and he just laughs. And the last thing he says is, hey, Louie, and the last thing he says is, hey, I'm doing very fine. Well, that's all I got to say. I tried to tell you a little bit about the lifeline. About the men of the lifeline. I hope it gives you something to think about. I guess that's all. Good night. You've heard a program in the series Words at War. Tonight, an adaptation of Lifeline by Robert Koss. A story of the United States merchant marine prepared for radio by Charles Newton. Al Cook was portrayed by Joseph Julian and screwy Louie by Larry Haynes. Others in the cast were Arthur Elmer, Tom Hoyer, Arthur Cole, Joe Latham, Daniel Occo, Carl Weber and Maurice Ellis. The music was arranged and played by William Meader and the entire production was under the direction of Frank Papp. Words at War is brought to you in cooperation with the Council on Books in Wartime by the National Broadcasting Company and its independent affiliated stations. This is the National Broadcasting Company.